


Over/Under

by provocative_envy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Anal Sex, Casual Sex, Developing Relationship, Getting Together, Hand Jobs, Humor, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Light Angst, M/M, Romance, Self-Esteem Issues, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:54:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24187714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/pseuds/provocative_envy
Summary: “Hello,” the kid eventually says, and oh, oh, man, that accent. Crisp. Patronizing. Expensive. Eerily reminiscent of all the yacht club jerkoffs Scabior used to get in fights with at parties when he was in high school. “Are you Scabior?”
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Scabior
Comments: 97
Kudos: 234
Collections: RPSF 2020: Summer Camp





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. this fic was such a blast to write that i really want to do one of those summer camp high-five tunnel things with the whole spring fling gang - [scullymurphy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullymurphy/pseuds/scullymurphy), [granger_danger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/granger_danger/pseuds/granger_danger), [PacificRimbaud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PacificRimbaud/pseuds/PacificRimbaud), & [the_static_hum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_static_hum). the sheer amount of talent & support & kindness & also malaria in the group chat was always tremendous. please make sure you check out the rest of the fics in this collection, they're all fantastic.
> 
> 2\. re: this fic in particular - it's kind of the character study i didn't realize i've always wanted to write, probably because it's about scabior, who may or may not be a figment of my imagination, canon-wise, but i still get asks that are like "what is a scabior exactly??????" and now i'm just going to link everyone to this because i think it actually does a pretty good job of answering that question lmao
> 
> 3\. i'm using the age difference tag somewhat liberally - scabior is 25 years old, draco is either newly 18 or 19 depending on how you interpret some of their dialogue. i mostly wanted to warn for it because later on in the story there's an exchange/argument that, in my opinion, really highlights how young & inexperienced draco is, comparatively. it's not necessarily mentioned or viewed that way by scabior, who's narrating, but it struck me pretty hard when i was editing.
> 
> 4\. i rated this "E" to be safe but it's not really a true "E" - there's more than one scene in which technically explicit sexual language is used and technically explicit sex acts are described, but none of them are particularly long or particularly graphic. 
> 
> 5\. draco's post-high school who-am-i-hedwig rich kid malaise is deeply familiar to me, personally, but scabior has a tough time understanding it, so it isn't explored very much. similarly, draco's motives for liking/being attracted to scabior are also distinctly unclear for most of the fic; see: unreliable narrator tag. 
> 
> 6\. please. just. love this fic okay
> 
> 7\. comments/kudos are, as always, appreciated!!!
> 
> 8\. ignore the end notes until you actually get to the end, i'm bad at Being Online
> 
> xoxo

* * *

It starts with a knock.

Polite, firm, rhythmic, a confident little _rap-rap-rap_ of the knuckles, one-two-three, three-two-one; not loud enough to be a cop, but not annoying enough to be anyone Scabior is personally acquainted with.

He’s rummaging through the slightly grimy back shelves in his fridge, hunting for a misplaced wedge of blue cheese—shit is _Amish,_ delicately marbled and delightfully tangy—when he hears it. The knock. The interruption. He puffs his cheeks out, sigh-groaning as he ducks around a two-liter bottle of Coke and an overgrown bushel of heirloom rainbow carrots. Closes the fridge. Trudges from the mildewed linoleum floor in the kitchen to the spider-cracked tile floor in the hallway. Heaves open the front door, slumping forward to rest his forearm against the splintered wooden frame.

And then he freezes.

Stares.

Stares _hard_.

There’s a kid standing on his porch—and _goddamn_ but “kid” does not feel like the right word, the appropriate word, is squirming and rutting against the tip of Scabior’s tongue like it doesn’t want to fucking be there—and he’s tall and blond and skinny, technically, but that, too, doesn’t feel like the right word, not even fucking close, because there’s an understated kind of elegance to his jailbait-long legs and his jailbait-sharp collarbones and his jailbait-narrow hips, like he’s not just at the tail-end of a growth spurt, like he’s not just an awkward, zitty assortment of body parts that puberty’s spent six months stretching out, yanking in a billion different directions; no, he’s _lithe_. Slender. Willowy. Picture-perfect pretty in his salmon-pink tennis shorts and his tight white polo.

Actually, though.

 _Actually_.

The word that does—weirdly, ridiculously, hysterically—come to mind when Scabior gets a better look at the kid is “thoroughbred” and fuck, shit, _Christ,_ is he not touching that with a ten-foot pole. Or even a four-foot pole. Or—any poles, at all. No poles. Zero poles are going near that thought, spawned like a patch of hallucinogenic mushrooms around one of the leftover acid holes in Scabior’s brain.

“Hello,” the kid eventually says, and oh, oh, man, that _accent._ Crisp. Patronizing. Expensive. Eerily reminiscent of all the yacht club jerkoffs Scabior used to get in fights with at parties when he was in high school. “Are you Scabior?”

Scabior hums, noncommittal, and leans more heavily against the doorframe. The kid’s eyes are big and gray and shockingly clear, shockingly intent, as they flick from Scabior’s face to Scabior’s arms to Scabior’s chest. His bare arms. His bare chest. Because he doesn’t usually bother with shirts, not when he’s at home—not when he’s _not_ at home, either—and he forgets, sometimes, how certain strains of stranger can react to that. To him.

He’s an acquired taste.

Just like that fucking Amish blue cheese.

“Dunno,” Scabior says, squinting out at the driveway, towards where the mid-afternoon sun is glinting, glossy and fierce, off the silvery-beige hood of a Jeep. Hand-painted white letters are peeling off the passenger-side door. CAMP PIGWIDGEON. What a mouthful. “Who’s asking?”

The kid blinks, startled, his eyes dipping down again, tracing the swirling, jagged lines of Scabior’s tattoos, the rumpled, waxy scars and the scraggly trail of wiry black hair that disappears into his shorts. His unbuttoned shorts. The zipper’s just barely hanging on.

“Um,” the kid says, licking his lips. His cheeks are rapidly turning pink. “I’m—Malfoy. Draco Malfoy.”

Scabior hums again. “What do you want with Scabior, Malfoy, Draco Malfoy?”

The kid’s expression twitches with a visibly restrained hint of consternation. “I was told he was the person to go to if I needed to buy any recreational—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Little Debbie, tone that shit down,” Scabior interrupts, glancing furtively over Malfoy’s shoulder, as if to double-check he’s alone. “Who told you that?”

“I . . . my parents have a summer house here, so, you know, I’ve heard—I mean, I’ve heard things. Around. About . . . about him. You. Scabior.”

“Things,” Scabior repeats, curling his tongue over his teeth. Swishing back and forth. “I see.”

Malfoy swallows, that lush red mouth beginning to take on a decidedly fucking pouty—precious, pretentious, pretty, pretty, _pretty_ —slant. “Why did you call me that?”

“What’s that, buttercup?”

Malfoy’s nostrils flare. “ _Little Debbie_.”

“Oh, right,” Scabior says, tossing his hair. “You remind me of, like, those tiny, adorable cakes? Yeah? With the vanilla frosting? And the sprinkles?”

“I’m six-foot-three.”

“Maybe _physically._ ”

“What the fuck does that—”

“Anyway,” Scabior goes on, easy, breezy, beautiful, “you guessed right, I am Scabior, Scabior is I, but, uh, I don’t sell to strangers. And you, my very pale flamingo, are a stranger.”

Malfoy’s gaze goes flat with irritation, exasperation, impatience—a coolly understated layer of disdain, too, like the maraschino-cherry-stained whipped cream on top of an ice cream sundae, like he’s finally reached some arbitrary internal threshold for his willingness to pretend to give a single, self-defeating shit what someone like Scabior fucking thinks of him. Maxed it out like a credit card.

“Right,” Malfoy says, over-enunciating the ‘t’ as he crosses his arms over his chest. Petulant. Prickly. _Pretty._ “Of course.”

Scabior smirks, almost unfairly amused. _Charmed,_ really. He’s fucking charmed. He lowers his arm from the doorframe, slowly, deliberately straightening back up, stepping sideways, leaving plenty of space for Malfoy to come inside. Well. Not _plenty_ of space. There’s—space. Enough space. Probably.

“You don’t _have_ to stay a stranger, though, do you?” Scabior asks, raising his eyebrows. It’s not a challenge. Or a dare. Or an intimidation tactic. It’s an invitation. Possibly the skeevy saxophone-saddled intro to a highly specific kind of wet dream. Above board, nothing to see here, move the fuck along. “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy?”

* * *

Fine.

Whatever.

It’s a _little_ bit of a dare.

* * *

The party is a summer party.

Which is to say: the party is loud, and the party is crowded, and the party is fucking _slow._ More of a sleepy simmer than a raucous, rolling boil. There’s a boombox covered in ragged strips of duct tape and a trash bag full of Natty Light perched like goddamn king-and-queen royalty in the bed of the rusty, biohazard shit-can Dolohov calls a truck; the boombox is blaring Springsteen and the beer cans are sitting in a puddle of rapidly melting convenience store ice. The keg is probably stolen, and the bonfire is probably illegal. The whole scene is kind of scummy, honestly.

Scabior fits right in.

“Malfoy, Draco Malfoy” pretty obviously does not.

He’s here, though, standing closer than he arguably should be, hair slicked back and breath tainted sour-sweet with a medley of cheap wine coolers—Scabior is pleasantly buzzed, a dented red plastic cup in his hand, mostly relaxed, mostly content, his head tilted curiously to one side as he studies “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy” and tries to work out why the fuck he’s even here.

Not at this party, no.

Not at this party, _specifically._

Parties don’t discriminate, or at least parties like this don’t discriminate, and Scabior is all too familiar with the concept of yacht club jerkoffs deciding to slum it up with the townies for a night or two, just to get it out of their systems. Just to scrape off the novelty of it all. It’s a neatly separate intro chapter in their little socialite guidebook. Optional. Extra credit. “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy” being at this party is self-explanatory.

But him being _here_.

Here, with Scabior. 

That absolutely is not.

Like, what the fuck, right?

“You need something, daisy chain?” Scabior eventually asks.

“ _Daisy chain?”_

“Yeah,” Scabior says, making a seesawing motion with his free hand. “You know. Cute. Dainty. White and yellow.”

Malfoy pauses, swaying closer, looking suspiciously thoughtful. Looking suspiciously _drunk_ , although—“drunk” really isn’t the right word, just like so many other words haven’t been the right words, not where “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy” is concerned, because “drunk” means sloppy, means dumb, means wild, and—no. Just, no. Malfoy’s flushed and sweaty and loose-limbed and weirdly expressive, maybe, not-so weirdly pretty, definitely, but he’s wearing fancy leather boat shoes and a heavy gold watch worth more than Scabior’s goddamn _house_ , so.

“Drunk” is not the right word.

He’s—inebriated. Intoxicated. _Under the influence_. Yeah. Dictionary-dry, vacuum-sealed. Utterly unoffensive.

“ _Okay_ ,” Malfoy drawls, pursing his lips. “Again, I’m not exactly—I mentioned how tall I am, didn’t I?”

Scabior solemnly nods. “Six-foot-three, yeah. Like a redwood in a blond wig.”

Malfoy pauses again, the delicate center curve of his upper lip drifting ever so slightly upwards, like he’s fighting some deep-seated, very likely genetic impulse to sneer. “Why a redwood?”

Scabior takes a swig of his now-lukewarm beer. “They’re, like, recognizably tall trees.”

“ _All_ trees are, like, recognizably tall trees,” Malfoy mimics snidely, swaying forward even _more_.

“Yeah, fine, sure, but would—” Scabior bites back a grin, tongue poking at the inside of his cheek. “—‘like a native Madagascar baobab tree in a blond wig’ be as _powerful_ of a metaphor? Huh? Check and _mate,_ Pollyanna.”

At that, Malfoy snorts out a laugh that’s pitched lower, more genuinely, so much less condescendingly, than Scabior expects; he actually sounds surprised, too, like maybe he wasn’t expecting his laugh to come out like that, either. Like maybe it usually doesn’t.

“It’s just, you know,” Malfoy says, tucking his thumbs into the pockets of his shorts, “redwoods are red. And I’m not.”

Scabior takes another swig of beer.

And then another, just for something to do.

But before he can stop himself—and shit, fuck, _shit_ does he need to fucking stop himself—he’s giving Malfoy a long, leisurely once-over, gaze raking, sweeping, lingering over every last inch of exposed skin he can find; legs and arms, ankles and wrists, the graceful column of his throat and the razor-sharp cut of his jaw. Malfoy is pale, the kind of pale that Shakespeare used to write sonnets about, his complexion milky, flawless, imbued with diamonds or starlight or fairy tears or whatever the fuck, the kind of pale that Scabior is too much of a degenerate to actually appreciate the _basic aesthetic principles of_ because all he can fucking _see_ , suddenly, all he can fucking _focus on_ , is how ripe all that skin is for—

For Scabior’s mouth.

For Scabior’s teeth.

For Scabior’s _hands,_ big and callused and rough and bronzed from too many years in the sun, scarred from too many years in the kitchen, sliding up those legs. Measuring. Arranging. Spreading. Wrapped snugly around those ankles, those wrists, that throat; not hard enough to leave a mark, no, but hard enough to leave an _impression_.

“Wait, wait, no, hey, this isn’t what I—” Malfoy shakes his head, as if to clear out the residual amusement, like cobwebs in an attic, and then he blurts out: “Where are your _clothes?”_

Scabior blinks. “Sorry, what?”

“I mean, earlier—okay. I could rationalize that, you were at home, you weren’t expecting company—”

“ _Company,_ ” Scabior mouths to himself, bewildered, no, fucking delighted, because Malfoy is talking like Scabior had invited him in for tea and scones and cucumber sandwiches and a rousing game of, what, bridge? Gin rummy? Uno?

“—but this is, well, this is a social event, isn’t it? There’s etiquette, protocol, you can’t just—you’re half-naked! Is that even, I just, is that _allowed?”_

Malfoy’s cheeks are growing steadily pinker, the color seeping up towards his hairline, out towards his ears, but this close up that isn’t even the tenth or eleventh or twentieth most interesting thing about him. About his face. There’s a patchy shadow of dark blond stubble skimming the underside of his jaw, sparsely uneven, and his eyes are magnificent, mercurial, ringed in blue and fringed with gently curling lashes, spiky and clumped together at the corners—subtle imperfections, inconspicuous, microscopic, that a normal goddamn person with a normal goddamn amount of self-control—with a normal goddamn amount of _self-respect_ —would never fucking notice.

Grimacing, Scabior takes yet another quick sip of beer, draining it, tasting foam, and then glances away, shoving his unoccupied hand into the back pocket of his shorts. His shorts aren’t really designed for that, though, for the pockets to be useful, so it’s a tight fit. A struggle. An exercise in abject futility. Whatever.

“It’s summer, sweetheart,” he finally says, the endearment slipping out like a loose screw in one of the ancient, creaking barstools at the greasy fucking hellhole Dolohov has the _gall_ to refer to as a “rustic tavern”—the one with the moldy dartboards and the out-of-order unisex bathroom and the scorch marks on the ceiling. “Clothes are definitely optional, just, generally. Especially for me. Around me. In, like, my sphere of being.”

Malfoy furrows his brow. “Your . . . sphere of being?”

“Yeah, you know, like—” Scabior twirls his index finger around, making a circular motion with the cup he’s still holding. “—my _orbit?_ My magnetic field?”

“You’re not a planet,” Malfoy says, but then he huffs wryly, lips quirking, expression softening, and adds, “Not _physically_ , at least.”

Scabior barks out a startled laugh. “Yeah, well,” he drawls, shrugging one shoulder, instantly drawing Malfoy’s attention down to his chest, where it seems to kind of . . . _stick_ , tacky and hot, like a burger patty on a grill that hasn’t been oiled up yet, “we already went over the power of a good metaphor, didn’t we?”

Malfoy hums and squints up at the sky, at the ruffled, leafy tree cover and the plume of smoke filtering out from the bonfire—a bunch of his friends, Scabior assumes, preppy and young and terminally bored, are watching them from the opposite side of the flames. A skinny dark-haired girl is smirking, nudging a less-skinny dark-haired girl with the point of her elbow, while a brawny, nervous-looking guy in a pair of teeny-tiny blue shorts swats at a mosquito.

A breeze flutters by, traipsing through the woods like the laziest of all fairytale retreads, and Malfoy is swaying forward again, his body listing closer, his balance wavering; Scabior breathes in, registers the mingling, overlapping scents of burning marshmallows and expensive cologne and shitty weed and something else, something different, something delicate and musky and—

Malfoy smells good.

Malfoy smells _really_ good.

Of fucking course he does.

Scabior gives up, then, and takes a comically huge step backwards, away from Malfoy, his empty cup crinkling in his hand as his grip tightens, loosens, tightens—

Malfoy’s stomach emits a loud, roaring growl.

“Jesus,” Scabior says, just as Malfoy blanches, his face creasing with a ferociously enthralling glimmer of embarrassment. “Warn a guy.”

Malfoy dips his chin so he can frown down at his own lower abdomen. “I might have skipped dinner.”

“Oh, yeah?”

His frown turns sulky. “Camp food is _disgusting,_ it’s all congealed SpaghettiOs and stale hot dog buns and canned vegetables and what even _is_ a—” Full-on finger quotes. Unreal. “— _sloppy joe,_ anyway? Who wants to eat that? Who _asked_ to eat that, like, historically?”

Scabior snorts, and then sighs, and then pries his hand out of his back pocket, flexing his wrist, shaking out his fingers, jerking his thumb towards the dusty, pine-needle threaded path that leads to the lake. The access road. His bungalow.

“Come on, Aquafresh,” he says, unable to mask his amusement. “I make a killer mac and cheese.”

Malfoy hesitates, staring at him, sharp and shrewd and a little shy, maybe—except, no, fuck no, that’s not the right word, “shy” would never, could never, _will_ never be the right word because none of these words are the right words, none of them _fit,_ and why, _why,_ is this arrogant barely legal yacht club jerkoff _kid_ such a fucking enigma? What’s his goddamn deal?

Like so much else, this strikes Scabior as a distinctly, uniquely Scabior-shaped problem.

“Yeah. Okay. I could—” Malfoy breaks off, his perfectly straight, bleach-bright teeth clamped tightly around his bottom lip, worrying it, chewing it, and then he sniffs. Coughs into his fist. Plays it transparently fucking cool. “Yeah, I could eat.”

* * *

Scabior knows better.

He does.

He knows better, and he knows _worse_ , and he knows exactly how this is all going to end.

* * *

Malfoy scrapes his spoon against the bottom of his bowl, that distractingly wet, distractingly pink tongue flicking out to swipe at the last little bit of cheese sauce.

Scabior’s dick has been half-hard for, like, at least fifteen minutes. Maybe more. Not because he has a weird thing for watching pretty people eat—he doesn’t, this isn’t really about the eating—but because he does, apparently, have a weird thing for watching pretty people eat food that he, personally, has prepared.

So, heart crossed, hopeful to die, it isn’t actually about “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy” at all.

“You know,” Malfoy says, tapping his spoon against the chipped green rim of his bowl, casting a considering look over at Scabior from across the kitchen table. One of the table legs is about an inch or two shorter than the other three, propped up by a dog-eared, marinara-stained copy of _The Joy of Cooking,_ and the neon-orange Garfield clock on the wall is ticking, tocking, tiger-striped tail swishing, helplessly accounting for each and every second of silence that goes by. “When you said you made a ‘killer mac and cheese’ I thought you meant, like—that stuff from the box.”

Scabior shifts in his seat, chair creaking. “You were going to come over here to eat _boxed_ mac and cheese? After bitching about SpaghettiOs?”

“Well,” Malfoy says, a smirk twitching to life, “I also thought it might’ve been a euphemism for, uh, something else. Something . . . less literal.”

At that, Scabior’s dick perks up even more, the fucking traitor, and he has to casually slouch forward so he can dig the heel of his palm into the front of his shorts, adjusting the telltale bulge there. He is way too old for this shit.

“Okay, so, _whoa,_ reign those horses in, Susannah,” he says mildly. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I’m not that kind of girl _anymore,_ ” Scabior concedes. “Those days are over for me. Firmly in the past. Forever. Scout’s, uh . . . scout’s honor.”

Malfoy tilts his head to the side, slow and measured and disbelieving, and it’s flattering, honestly, how he’s looking at Scabior. Intense. Precious. _Wily_. Like a baby predator. Like he thinks he’s bringing something new to the proverbial party, here, something sleek and sexy and suave and seductive; he’s probably used to it working, too, on whoever he tried to fuck in high school. Body like that? Pedigree like that? Bank account like that?

Yeah, it definitely worked.

But Scabior’s not in high school, thank fucking Christ, and even if he was—he isn’t that easy anymore. Well. No, he is, that’s a bald-faced goddamn lie, but he doesn’t _want_ to be that easy for “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy” because that’s a winding, deadly, one-lane road to hell, paved with bad intentions, no U-turns, no speed bumps, no stop signs—do not pass GO. Do not collect $200. Pay your fucking rent.

Scabior’s learned a lot of lessons about yacht club jerkoffs, over the years.

“So, you really invited me over to . . .” Malfoy peers doubtfully at his empty bowl. “Eat?”

Scabior grins, unabashed. Insincere. “You’ve got bird bones, baby, and I’m, like, one-sixteenth Italian. My inner-Nonna could not abide letting you go hungry.”

Malfoy drops his spoon, drumming his long, elegant, _manicured_ fingers against the scratched-up, paint-flecked tabletop. “So,” he says, seemingly giving up on their previous conversation. Which is—fair. Fine. Scabior gives up on tons of shit, like, pretty fucking regularly. _Tons_ of shit. “What now, then?”

Scabior scrunches his nose up, leaning back in his chair until he’s balanced on two wobbly cedar legs. Malfoy’s expression is uncomfortably contemplative, irritatingly _smug,_ like he thinks he has the upper hand, like he thinks he fucking knows something, something about Scabior—he’d made this _noise_ , when he took his first wary, tentative bite of macaroni; a throaty, guttural, outrageously erotic almost-moan, stunned, appreciative, like what he was tasting was fucking _good._ Really good. Worth the effort.

Scabior forces out a chuckle and reflexively scratches at the back of his neck, where his hair is falling out of its bun. “Truth or Dare,” he says, chair dropping back down onto all four legs as he angles his torso forward again, placing his elbows on the table, shimmying his hips so his dick lays a little less snugly against the inseam of his shorts. “You can tell a lot about a man from a game like that.”

Malfoy scoffs, audibly unimpressed. “No, you can’t.”

“Uh, yeah, you _can_.”

“There is _nothing_ to stop anyone from lying once they pick Truth, it is _the_ dumbest game.”

“Usually, yeah,” Scabior agrees. “But a nice, sheltered, clean-cut pretty boy like you? Bet you’ve got a million tells.”

“Are you suggesting,” Malfoy says, sounding amused, “that because I don’t, what, trim my hair with garden shears and a rusty nail file—”

“That’s . . . _really_ specific.”

“—I’m a bad liar?”

Scabior lets his eyelids go a little heavy, the slant of his mouth a little sleazy, as he sweeps his gaze over Malfoy’s face. Taunting. Teasing. “What I am _suggesting_ , Nancy Drew—”

“Oh, my god.”

“—is that people who think they’re good liars are typically _never_ good liars,” Scabior finishes in a rumbling stage-whisper, like he’s that old guy from _The Karate Kid_ dispensing sage, sophisticated wisdom to the youths, except he’s doing it with all the finesse of a goddamn vending machine. “It’s science. Psychology. Basic shit.”

Malfoy doesn’t immediately reply. His eyes shutter a bit, though, his cheeks flushing a rosy, delectable shade of pink even as his posture goes stiff, brittle, combative, like he’s itching to prove Scabior wrong, somehow, like he can’t fucking stand the very real possibility that he might not be able to, that he _can’t_ —and it’s enchanting, and it’s hilarious, and it’s insane, actually, honest-to-god fucking _crazy_ how fun this is. Muscling through all that shiny, expertly polished pretense. Sloughing off that fourteen-karat sparkle. 

“Dare,” Malfoy eventually blurts out, prodding at the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “I choose Dare.”

Scabior isn’t surprised—isn’t even disappointed, not really—but he still makes a big, exaggerated show of frowning and sighing and squinting at the clock, at its mechanically swinging ceramic tail and its slightly wobbly minute hand; it’s late, late enough that he’s abruptly reminded of all the shit he _doesn’t_ know about “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy”—all the shit he shouldn’t be curious about, not even on his worst, most incurably reckless day, but is, anyway, because of _course_ he is. He was always going to be.

“Alright, Suzie Q, I dare you to . . .” Scabior trails off. His knee is bouncing up and down beneath the table, without any discernable rhythm, but Malfoy’s sitting perfectly still. Like he’s been trained for this. _Bred_ for it. Maybe he has. Maybe this is what yacht club jerkoffs are taught at prep school. Maybe it’s a goddamn extracurricular activity. “I dare you to tell me why the hell you and your nineteen-digit trust fund are working at a summer camp.”

Malfoy mouth puckers, just for a moment, like he accidentally bit into the fancy paper-thin lemon slice floating around in his country club ice water, but then he smiles. Sort of. “That’s cheating.”

“No, it’s a _loophole_.”

“‘Loophole’ is just another word for cheating.”

“Hey, none of that loser mentality in my kitchen, Ivan Drago,” Scabior says, jabbing his finger in Malfoy’s direction. “Do I look like a loser to you? Huh? Don’t fucking answer that.”

Malfoy’s smile stretches wider, then, more real, less sly, before he glances away. “I, uh—I didn’t want to do any of the things my parents had planned for me this summer,” he says, carefully neutral, and it isn’t a lie, it’s too vague to be a lie, but it’s definitely not the whole truth. “The camp was—it was a compromise.”

Scabior blinks, taken aback by the sheer involuntary blandness of the response, because he’d imagined that particular question eliciting some dumb-shit, meandering story about, like, knocking up the maid or flunking out of West Point or getting kicked off his dad’s favorite golf course and subsequently being punished with manual labor and SpaghettiOs. “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy” is supposed to be standoffish and narcissistic and oblivious, not _secretive_. Not that “secretive” is the right word for this. It isn’t. But Scabior can’t, for the fucking life of him, think of a better alternative. A more accurate one.

“Huh,” Scabior says, clearing his throat. Across the room, the clock ticks. The refrigerator buzzes. The overhead fluorescent lights chirp and rattle and thrum, like the bulbs are trying to warn them they’re about to burn out. “Okay. That’s cool.”

Malfoy swallows, lips parting, lowering his eyes so he’s staring at Scabior through the fan of his lashes, an even darker, hotter blush creeping up the collar of his shirt as he says, with a little bit of an edge, mean and self-conscious and flustered, frustrated, like it’s occurring to him, belatedly, that Scabior might’ve actually tricked him into revealing something personal, something he wasn’t ready or willing to delve into, not at all:

“Your turn.”

* * *

Scabior picks Dare because he isn’t a fucking idiot, thanks, and Malfoy doesn’t even have the common goddamn decency to act like he gives a shit about the integrity of the game, doesn’t even bother _speaking,_ offering up some lame, cringey, exceptionally adolescent “prank-call the pharmacy and ask if you can bulk order tampons, ha ha” bullshit—no, he just climbs to his feet, stomps around the table, and hauls Scabior into a hard, bruising, utterly unrepentant kiss.

Like _that’s_ the dare.

Like _that’s_ the point.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

Dolohov’s bar is the kind of hole-in-the-wall dive that makes all the other average, regular, garden-variety hole-in-the-wall dives look like fucking Michelin-starred Parisian cafes, in comparison.

It’s grimy.

Dimly-lit.

In possession of several literal, actual holes in its literal, actual walls.

There isn’t a drink menu or a wine list or a quaint little chalkboard sign with all the beers on tap for the day scribbled in chicken-scratch alphabetical order down the front; it’s in a narrow, ramshackle building that Scabior could’ve sworn used to be a tackle shop, on the very outskirts of town, right across the road from the two-pump no-name gas station that still sells cigarettes to kids if they ask rudely enough. There’s no parking lot, just a huge, scraggly patch of dirt littered with warped bottle caps and long-lost arcade tokens and stubbornly sprouting dandelions.

It’s not a place you bring somebody for a date.

Not if you want a second one, at least, and that’s just—shit, that’s just for average, regular, garden-variety somebodies. Not somebodies like “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy” and his six-hundred-dollar chinos.

Which is why they’re there.

Because Scabior _doesn’t_ want a second date.

Does not.

No, sir.

Fuck that.

Didn’t even want the first one, frankly.

“Is that an _alligator_ head?” Malfoy asks, waving the Hawaiian blue toothpick umbrella that Dolohov had inexplicably served his drink with—served his fucking _Tanqueray_ with—at the dark, shadowy corner where the jukebox and the pool table are. In addition to the alligator head, there’s a ragged Sex Pistols poster and a rickety plywood rack holding two broken cue sticks and a gleaming silver sword with a serpent carved around the hilt that Scabior’s never quite had the nerve to speculate on the provenance of. “It is, isn’t it? An alligator head? Where did—”

“Florida,” Scabior interrupts, taking a long, languorous gulp of his whiskey. It isn’t, strictly speaking, _good_ whiskey; drinking it straight both tastes and feels terrible. Like heartburn. And an ulcer. At the same fucking time. “He for sure got that thing in Florida.”

“How do you know that?” Malfoy furrows his brow, still twirling the toothpick umbrella around. “ _Why_ do you know that?”

Scabior takes another sip of whiskey, idly inspecting the dusty liquor bottles arranged in a staggered zigzagging pattern behind the bar. There are tallies gouged into the beige vinyl molding separating the countertop from the faded, ugly, multi-colored striped wallpaper peeling off around the edges of the light switch—seven of them, eerily uniform, like a fucking prison countdown. How many weeks did summer camp last? A month? _Multiple_ months?

“Oh, Dolohov and I go way back,” Scabior says with a jerky, restless shrug. Malfoy tracks the movement, gaze pinned with an unwavering, inscrutable heat to the muscles in Scabior’s bare shoulders; taut and bulky and deeply tanned, like a physical goddamn manifestation of all the less tangible differences between the two of them. “He’s, uh, he’s my supplier. Actually.”

Malfoy tears his eyes away from Scabior’s chest, glancing towards the end of the bar, where Dolohov is doing inventory, swearing under his breath in Russian while he sorts through a crate of vodka and scowls murderously at the clipboard in his lap. He’s dressed all in black, long sleeved t-shirt and tight leather pants and steel-toed combat boots, a heavy gold crucifix chained around his neck as if to offer definitive proof he isn’t a fucking vampire.

“I see,” Malfoy murmurs, delicately sipping at his stupid fucking boring old man gin and tossing his hair back, the motion easy and practiced and extremely, excessively deliberate in that it’s designed, engineered, fucking _choreographed_ to show off the elegant line of his throat and all the marks Scabior had spent the past three nights putting there.

Malfoy’s skin is _glowing,_ smooth and soft and luminous, with the faintest, pinkest sheen of a fresh sunburn.

Scabior gulps down more whiskey.

“So,” Malfoy says, a little impatiently, like he’s finally remembered he is, in fact, a smarmy yacht club jerkoff and he’s getting real fucking tired of making glorified small talk with the lowlife drug dealer he’s sleeping with, D.A.R.E. bumper stickers be damned. “How old are you, anyway?”

Scabior cracks his knuckles. “Twenty-five.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

“ _Oh,_ ” Malfoy repeats, draining his glass and plopping it down on the bar with a muted clatter. “That’s just—that’s older. Than I thought. Assumed. Where did you go to college?”

Scabior snorts, unamused. “Funny.”

“What is?”

“You are, short stack.”

“Short st—I’m _six-foot-three._ ”

“Yeah, wow, that is completely new information to me, thank you for sharing.”

Malfoy rolls his eyes even as he huffs out a laugh. “Answer the question, come on.”

“What question?” Scabior asks, too innocently.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, _seriously._ ” Scabior licks his lips. Chapped. Dry. Salty. “You don’t actually think I went to college, do you? Like, _Animal House_ wasn’t a documentary.”

Malfoy wrinkles his nose, turning in his seat so that his pale, bony, valley girl knees are bumping against Scabior’s thigh. Dolohov has vanished into a storage closet that used to have a sign on the door that read “EMPLOYEES ONLY” until a drunk Labor Day tourist had taken a razor blade to the black plastic lettering and shaved off the first six, so it’s mostly quiet in the bar now, the silence undercut by a lone trio of ancient, aqua-colored fans sputtering above the slightly discolored chalk board that’s still covered with the undeniably illegal remnants of last year’s World Series bets. F. Greyback lost a lot of fucking money on the Cardinals. R. Lestrange, squared, cashed out after Game 5.

Christ, though, the _silence_.

The silence is thick, suffocating, oppressive, like some kind of not quite deadly but fully fucking annoying allergic reaction—it’s justifiably awkward, too, in a way that it probably should’ve always been, hovering between them like an obviously preposterous smog cloud. Rude. Unwanted.

What the fuck do they have in common?

What the fuck are they doing here?

Malfoy isn’t very chatty, Scabior’s learned; he talks a lot when he’s nervous, when he’s uncertain, when he’s uncomfortable, when he’s trying his level, arrogant best to impress someone. But he’s typically, naturally, _watchful._ Observant. Discerning. Sneaky smart, and terrifyingly perceptive.

It’s been _three days_ and Scabior is in so far over his head he needs a fucking snorkel just to keep treading water.

Just to keep breathing.

“Truth or Dare, Billy Joel,” Scabior hears himself say, like a fucking idiot, like a fucking desperate, masochistic _idiot—_ but it’s almost worth it, almost worth the inevitable spiral of heartache and disaster he can already see forming on the horizon, whipping itself into a frenzy, a hurricane, jagged, wind-sharpened teeth gnawing on blue skies and green grass and that pristine, crystalline stillness that precedes a real goddamn fuckstick of a summer storm, because Malfoy—

He _smiles_.

* * *

Scabior really didn’t sign up for this shit.

* * *

They end up outside, Malfoy shoved against the crumbling red brick wall next to the back door of the bar, a few feet away from the halo of a flickering, unflatteringly yellow security light—he’s gasping, panting, mouth open and breath hot and eyes hazy, pupils blown, as Scabior fumbles with the buttons and zippers and waistbands of their shorts, biting sloppy, frantic kisses into the curve of Malfoy’s neck, tongue slipping out to curl around his ear, across that tantalizing little spot beneath his jaw that never fails to make him shiver, make him moan—Scabior gets a spit-slick hand around both of their dicks, rocks his hips forward, soaks up the velvety friction and the slippery slide of precum as he moves his fist, up, down, twist, _squeeze—_ Malfoy comes first, a minute or two later, on a high-pitched, warbling sigh, cum striping the flat of his lower abdomen and the bottom of his prissy designer polo and the back of Scabior’s wrist.

Scabior slurps it up.

Chases his own orgasm.

Swipes his thumb over the head of his cock, pressing down, digging in, because he likes that barely-there twinge of pain, that too-much not-enough rough-around-the-edges _spark_.

* * *

There’s a joke in there, somewhere.

A fucking good one.

* * *

Malfoy’s been hanging around, spoiled and distracting and pretty and irritatingly _not_ irritating, for three, almost four weeks, before Scabior finally sees him in one of his adorable, mustard-stained, camp-issued counselor t-shirts.

“ _Fancy_ ,” Scabior says, cracking open a beer and leaning back against his dingy tile counter. The kitchen smells like yeast and olive oil and roasted garlic, the scents merging, melding, wafting out from under the threadbare green dishtowel lying on top of a stainless-steel mixing bowl. “If I wasn’t such a fine, upstanding, law-abiding citizen, that little outfit might do something for me.”

“If you weren’t such a fine, upstanding, law-abiding citizen,” Draco drawls, visibly biting back a smile, no, a smirk, “I wouldn’t even _be_ here.”

Scabior pauses, the rim of his beer can just barely grazing the tip of his tongue, cold and moist and distinctly sour. He isn’t sure what to make of that comment. Can’t quite tell what it means, what it’s _meant_ to mean, whether or not Malfoy is hoping for some kind of reaction—some kind of overreaction. But he does know what it sounds like it means. What it sounds like it’s _meant_ to mean. A cleverly disguised insult. A tacit acknowledgement of exactly what this is, exactly what they are to each other.

And Scabior isn’t a fucking idiot, okay?

He looks like one, sure. Talks like one, definitely. Puts on a real goddamn believable show of pretending to be one, absolutely. But he hasn’t been kidding himself. There’s a script that he and “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy” are following, line by line, scene by scene, frame by frame, specific roles they’re both playing, stereotypes they’re both embodying—Scabior the scumbag, Draco the princess.

It’s like _Lady and the Tramp_ minus the egregiously, unrealistically happy ending and the checkered red-and-white tablecloths.

Scabior doesn’t own a tablecloth.

Scabior doesn’t want to own a tablecloth.

Scabior isn’t in the fucking _market_ for a fucking _tablecloth_.

“Yeah, well,” Scabior says, stalling, hedging his bets, militantly dropping—avoiding—the subject and turning his attention to the mixing bowl. He whips the dishtowel off, peering down at the gently rising, oily sheen of the pizza dough. Whistles lowly. Appreciatively. “Oh, fuck yeah. There he is. Look at this bad boy. Proof that, motherfucker.”

Malfoy chokes out a laugh, the same stuttering, incredulous, begrudgingly indulgent laugh that he only seems to use whenever he’s particularly _struck_ by Scabior’s ability to perform simple, routine tasks—shit like driving stick or killing a spider or sorting the goddamn laundry. Like Scabior’s competence, however fucking fleeting, is amusing. Endearing. Like he’s a puppy who’s learned a fun new trick. Fetch. Bark. Come.

“You’re making . . . pizza?” Malfoy asks.

“ _We’re_ making pizza, Luigi,” Scabior says, ducking down to heave a pastry board out from the cabinet below the sink; he sprinkles it with flour, thoroughly dusting his hands, and then carefully reaches for the dough. “You down to fight this guy?”

Draco blinks. “Excuse me?”

Scabior has to viciously stamp out the tiny, theater-buttered kernel of fondness he can literally, physically feel expanding in his chest, preparing to pop, ready to explode. He isn’t _fond_ of “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy”—he likes fucking him, yeah, and doesn’t mind his weirdly intense hatred of SpaghettiOs or the occasional hysterically petulant tantrum he throws about how scratchy and unpleasant the sheets are on his shitty camp bunk bed.

That’s it, though.

He’s tolerable.

Scabior _tolerates_ him.

“Kneading the dough,” Scabior explains, wiggling his flour-covered fingers. “It’s, like, therapeutic. Like you get to beat the shit out of someone, right, but it’s _good_ for them. You’re doing them a _favor_.”

Malfoy opens his mouth to reply, cherry-red lips forming a nearly perfect ‘O’, but then appears to think better of whatever he was going to say, humming noncommittally instead, his eyes crinkling a little, glinting with something—something odd, something different, something decidedly, deceptively sweet that Scabior refuses to examine too closely, too obviously, because he doesn’t really trust himself not to interpret it all wrong.

He’s not that kind of risk-taker.

Not that kind of oblivious. 

He’s already had most of the optimism wrung out of him by people who are far more efficient—far more _ruthless—_ than Malfoy could ever hope to be.

“Right,” Draco says, sniffing delicately, glancing down with evident distaste at his adorable, mustard-stained, camp-issued counselor t-shirt. “Well. I’m actually—I need to take a shower, I smell like chicken nuggets and the tenth circle of _hell_. So. I’ll be a minute.”

Scabior shrugs, watching him slink out of the kitchen, the fluidity of his movements, his posture, so conspicuously fucking graceful—except, no, “graceful” isn’t the right word, and neither is “agile” or “athletic” or about a dozen other ballet dancer bullet points that Scabior’s getting real goddamn tired of trying to make work, of trying to _force_ —but then he hears the bathroom door squeak open from down the hall, hears the pipes inside the walls quiver and groan before a noticeably unsteady stream of water pitter-patters against the tub; there’s the whisper of a shower curtain being yanked shut and the squishy rasp of skin being scrubbed and then there’s Scabior, left to his own miserably inadequate devices, halfheartedly punching at a ball of pizza dough.

Was he supposed to have _followed_ Malfoy?

Joined him?

Offered to wash his back or pass him the soap or whatever the fuck other gay porn locker room pick-up lines he could remember?

Scabior shakes his head, cheeks puffed out, and continues kneading the dough, resolutely ignoring the fluttery prickle of unease taking root in his gut, that sixth-sense intuition bullshit that usually signifies he’s forgotten something. His keys. His wallet. His sanity. He really shouldn’t still be fucking this kid, this—bastion of yacht club jerkoff royalty; it’s just that he’s kind of morbidly, helplessly curious now, because why is “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy” still _here?_ Why does he keep coming back?

Scabior had expected this whole thing to last for, like, a week, tops. Max. Maybe two.

_Maybe_.

He’d expected Malfoy to grow bored with the diversion, expected him to find someone closer to his own age if not his own tax bracket over at that lame summer camp; someone impressive, someone with a future, someone he could take home to meet Mom and Dad at their palatial fucking lake house. Exceptional circumstances would be required for Scabior to ever set foot in that house—like, a fire, for example, or a Cold War missile crisis, or a goddamn _Weekend at Bernie’s-_ grade catastrophe. He’s not that guy. He’s not a boyfriend.

There’s “inappropriate” and then there’s _Scabior_ , which is, inarguably, worse than that.

So much fucking worse than that.

“Hey, do you care if I—” Malfoy cuts himself off, voice echoing from what sounds like the bedroom. A dresser drawer rattles. Another door shuts. “Never mind, you don’t have a choice.”

Scabior looks up from where he’s knuckling at the pizza dough, pushing and pulling and prodding—but then his hands go still, and his mouth goes dry, and he forgets all about the tomato sauce simmering on the stove and the fresh mozzarella draining in the sink and why continuing to sleep with “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy” is such a phenomenally terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad idea. 

Malfoy’s walking through the doorway, wearing a pair of silky black boxers—his own, judging by the fact that they fit him properly—and a faded gray Def Leppard t-shirt that absolutely, unequivocally does _not_ fit him properly. It’s too long, too baggy, too big; even though they’re roughly the same height, Scabior has to have twenty or thirty pounds of muscle on the kid, is just generally broader and thicker and sturdier, so the well-worn ribbed cotton collar is practically hanging off of Draco’s pale, angular shoulder, exposing the wing of his collarbone, the swanlike bend of his neck, which is—

Well.

Scabior’s never really had a _thing_ for this kind of shit before. The possessive thing, the ownership thing, the monogamy thing. But it’s jarring, seeing _his_ clothes on _Malfoy’s_ body, like he’s staking a claim, planting a flag, marking his territory. Territory he doesn’t fucking want. Territory he can’t afford to fucking want.

“Hey,” Malfoy says with a sigh. His hair is damp but not wet, like he’d toweled it off before coming back out, and his face is splotchy and pink, either from the hot water or the cheap soap. “I hope you don’t put anything gross on your pizza, I just had to watch a bunch of eleven-year olds dip gummy worms in barbeque sauce and my stomach can’t handle any more abuse today.”

Scabior slouches into a grin, low and slow and helpless, and jerks his chin towards the pizza dough. “Okay, so, first of all, Mary Poppins, what the _fuck,_ why would you let them do that, shouldn’t you be _nurturing_ them or teaching them about the food pyramid or—”

“Absolutely fucking not.”

“—and second of all, come here. Grab some flour. Yeah, yeah, that’s enough, make sure it’s all over your hands—yeah, just like that.” Scabior’s heart is racing. His brain is screaming. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing, but he suspects the fallout is going to be eerily reminiscent of one of those elementary school experiments with the Mentos and the Diet Coke and the foamy, shaken-up, scientifically predictable volcano explosions. “Okay, so, dig in. Yeah. Really get in there, don’t be afraid of it, come on, it’s not going to fucking bite—you’ve had massages, right? Ritz-Carlton shit? It’s like that. Yeah. Just like that.”

Malfoy is awkwardly, hesitantly working the dough, scrunching his fingers, poking at it every so often as if to test how effective his kneading technique is; and it isn’t, of course, his kneading technique is inexperienced, unpracticed garbage, but that’s A-O-fucking-kay. Scabior was already mostly done.

“Earlier I said it was like punching something, but that’s not totally true,” Scabior murmurs, stepping back and to the side so that he’s standing behind Draco, arms caging him in against the counter, helping him go through the motions, get the rhythm of it right. Malfoy’s face is burning hot, Scabior can fucking _feel_ it, the blush, the heat, the exhilaration, and his breath is catching and his spine is arching and he’s pressing back into Scabior’s chest, ass to groin, almost rubbing, almost grinding—“Yeah, it’s more about the elasticity, right? The spring. The _stretch_.”

Malfoy exhales on a quiet, trembling laugh, licking his lips.

And he smells like Scabior’s deodorant and Scabior’s laundry detergent and Scabio’s blandly masculine 2-in-1 shampoo and it’s so easy, so ludicrously, mind-blowingly goddamn easy, to believe—briefly, temporarily, for just a moment—that _he’s_ Scabior’s, too.

That this fucking counts.

* * *

The pizza is perfect.

Crisp bottom, oregano-seasoned crust, melted cheese and caramelized prosciutto and sundried tomatoes and crushed Calabrian chili peppers and creamy spoonfuls of whole-milk ricotta.

Draco eats three slices and licks his fingers clean.

* * *

The partially mangled windshield wipers on Dolohov’s piece of shit junkyard-reject pickup truck drag across the glass with a whiny, nails-on-chalkboard kind of squeal, jerky and irregular and not nearly fast enough to keep up with the pace of the downpour.

“So, we’re here,” Scabior announces, flicking his thumb at the fossilized pine-tree shaped air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror. “You still want to go swimming?”

From the passenger seat, Draco frowns. Pouts. Frown-pouts. “This is bullshit.”

“This is _weather_ , actually.”

“Bullshit weather.”

“I mean, it’s just a little rain,” Scabior says, tapping his foot against the gas pedal, inching the truck forward a few more inches, closer to the end of the access road. “We can, uh, wait it out, probably.” He winces, craning his neck to peer out the window. Across the storm-stung, wind-ruffled surface of the lake, lightning flashes, bright, sizzling veins of electrified gold peeking through the cloud cover. “Maybe.”

Malfoy looks at him askance, drawing his knee up, planting the heel of his boat shoe on the edge of the cracked pleather seat. “We’re not having sex in this car.”

“Well, not with that attitude we’re not.”

“It’s _unsanitary_.”

“Baby, I don’t know how you missed this, but ‘unsanitary’ is basically my whole brand.”

Draco huffs irritably. “Fine, then it’s too _small_.”

A smirk curls around Scabior’s mouth, wrapping it up in a sleazy one-armed hug, tilting the proverbial odds, rocking the slightly less proverbial boat. “That’s not what you said last night. Or this morning. Or on Monday afternoon. Or—”

“Oh, my god, are you _done?”_

“Oh, my god,” Scabior says mockingly, good-naturedly—obnoxiously, too, if the vehemence of Malfoy’s answering eye roll is any indication. “Quit clutching your pearls, Miami Vice, I wasn’t actually talking about sex.”

“No?”

Scabior lazily drums his fingers against the steering wheel. “Honestly, I’m a little hurt that you seem to think I only care about sex.”

“That isn’t what I—”

“I am a man of layers,” Scabior continues, just as a booming clap of thunder reverberates through the rickety steel skeleton of the truck. “A man of _nuance_. My interests are highly, uh—highly cultured. Intellectual, even. How dare you.”

Draco looks like he’s trying not to smile, an errant chunk of sleek, platinum blond hair strung across the side of his forehead, no longer slicked back with the rest of it; and over the past five weeks Scabior has seen him in numerous, widely varied states of undress, of dishevelment, has seen him naked and sweaty and tired and sunburned and drunk and gasping, writhing, desperate—it’s fucking dizzying, actually, bewildering in both the best and worst ways, to think about how often Scabior’s seen him like that.

Guard lowered, relaxed, but not quite down.

Malfoy puts a lot of stock in appearances. Performances. Shit that he can control, shit that he can take advantage of, shit that he can _leverage_. It’s hard to tell sometimes what’s real and what isn’t—hard to tell if Scabior’s perception of him is an accident or not. Accurate or not.

“Cunning” is the word that tends to come to mind, but yacht club jerkoffs aren’t fucking _cunning_ , are they? They’re shallow, tedious, bluntly outdated instruments of, like, capitalism and inequality and under-seasoned foie gras canapes. They aren’t cunning. They aren’t clever. They aren’t secret goddamn nerds who unironically own official Scrabble dictionaries and who can quote _Back to the Future_ in the same breath as _The Iliad_ and who know how to take apart the fucking _engine_ of a fucking _car_ —and put it back together, too. Like it’s just a puzzle. Like it’s just a game.

Another flash of lightning streaks the sky, then, distant enough that the residual glow takes several seconds to fade, illuminating the feathered, gradient green of the treetops and the dilapidated wooden boards of the abandoned boathouse. The lake is dark blue. Cavernous. Shimmering.

“So, if you don’t want to fuck,” Malfoy says, shifting in his seat so he’s leaning back against the door, facing Scabior. “What do you want to do?”

Scabior sniffs. “Truth or Dare.”

Draco outright laughs at that, a slow, syrupy thing that sounds, no, that _feels,_ yeah—Scabior’s sensory wires must be crossed, feedback loops all fucked up—about as decadent as a chocolate souffle. There’s radio static thrumming in the background, fuzzy, barely-there white-noise, the volume cranked down but too carelessly to be turned all the way off; Scabior can hear it, just like he can hear the onslaught of the rain and the far-off rumbling of the thunder and the natural ebb and flow of the storm itself.

His heartbeat, too.

He can hear the shit out of that.

“Dare,” Malfoy says, predictably, teasingly, just like he always does. “Although I’m not sure how this will work, exactly, in such a . . . confined space.”

Scabior shakes his head, feigning disappointment. “No imagination.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Is that what I call what, Cabbage Patch?”

Draco snorts like he’s amused, maybe even bored, but averts his gaze like he’s uncomfortable. Nervous. “You know, your whole—your _brand_ , right? This—” He flaps his wrist. “— persona that you have. It’s very detailed. Very _imaginative_.”

“Uh. Ouch?”

“It’s a compliment!” Malfoy insists, fidgeting with the hem of his tank top. It’s striped. Red and yellow and blue and purple. “You’re, you know—compelling. Refreshing. Different.”

Scabior clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Slow. Careful. Casual. “Right. You said Dare?”

Draco swallows and nods and draws his other knee up onto the seat, his shorts—his _tennis_ shorts, Christ, wispy white Wimbledon nylon cut high enough to ride up his thighs, lean and smooth and milky pale; a staggering visual reminder that Scabior’s actually, technically, for now, allowed to _look_. If he wants to. If he feels like it.

He fucking wants to.

He fucking feels like it.

“I dare you to . . .” Scabior purses and unpurses his lips. “I dare you to explain _for real_ why you have, like, an honest-to-god summer job. Like a peasant. Like the townies in _Caddyshack_. You clearly don’t need the money and you clearly don’t hate your parents, I can sense that shit, I’m like a bloodhound for family drama, so. What’s your deal, Pantene Pro-V?”

“This is still cheating.”

“No, this is still a _loophole_.”

Malfoy groans, letting his head fall back, skull thumping against the rain-blurred window. “Do you—okay, so, have you heard of my father?”

“Uh.”

“It doesn’t matter. Whatever. He’s not really—” Draco breaks off, frustrated, and shimmies his shoulders, scowling thoughtfully. “He’s in politics. Sort of. Adjacently. My mother’s family is, too, they pride themselves on it, on being the Kennedys before the Kennedys were even the Kennedys—” He breaks off again, scowl deepening. Less thoughtful. More agitated. “It’s their legacy. My legacy. On both sides. And I’m an only child.”

Scabior blinks, not entirely understanding what Malfoy’s getting at—or, no, fuck no, Scabior _understands_ , yeah, he speaks English, he can string a few sentences together just fine, but listening to Malfoy so coolly, resentfully dismiss multiple generations of obscene, unimaginable wealth, of obscene, unimaginable privilege—Scabior can’t really fucking process that. It doesn’t compute. Doesn’t pass the smell test.

“Okay,” Scabior says, cracking his knuckles. “What does—like, what did you _do?_ Refuse to run for student council president? Become a socialist? Bring up the minimum wage at a dinner party?”

Malfoy sighs. “No, don’t be absurd. This summer, they wanted me to . . . well, _expected_ is probably the better word,” he mutters, almost to himself, nostrils flaring. “I had plans to go to Europe. For a leadership summit. Sponsored by my father’s old fraternity.”

“You . . . turned down a trip to _Europe_ to sleep in a bunk bed and teach asshole fifth-graders how to paddle a canoe?”

Draco’s expression tenses, twists, his jaw tight, his face pink. “If I could’ve come up with something better to do, I’d be doing it.”

Scabior furrows his brow, something in his chest—a muscle, a tendon, a vital, blood-pumping organ—beginning to _ache_ , beginning to hurt, like a splinter or a papercut or fucking early-onset arthritis, the longer he stares at Draco. The longer he studies him. Rain is lashing at the windshield, and Scabior isn’t sure, suddenly, that he wants to follow this particular train of thought to its logical endpoint. Its final destination.

“You’re, what, nineteen? Eighteen?” Scabior asks gruffly. Gently. His voice is wavering, sliding up and down the note scale like it hasn’t in a goddamn _decade_ , like he’s still hiding under the bleachers during Homecoming, getting high with Dolohov and gearing up for another round of pin-the-tail on the yacht club jerkoff. “I’m, like, pretty sure you aren’t supposed to have anything figured out yet. At all. That’s what college is for, right?”

Draco’s eyes narrow—defensively, uncertainly. “I thought you didn’t go to college.”

“I didn’t.”

“Then how do you know what college is _for?”_

Scabior pauses. “Did you ever see that Rodney Dangerfield movie? _Back to School?”_

A strangled, high-pitched, borderline hysterical giggle tumbles out of Draco’s mouth, then, and Scabior manages to join in, laughing with him, grinning broadly, helplessly, when Draco’s posture changes, a real, slightly crooked smile blossoming across his face, altering the shape of it, smoothing out the edges and the angles and the unforgiving, fucking _intimidating_ symmetry of it. Of him.

“Besides,” Scabior adds, “I’ve always known what I wanted to do. I just couldn’t do it.”

Malfoy’s smile flickers. “Why not?”

Scabior shrugs. “I, uh, I dropped out of high school.” He licks his lips, plucking at the grooves in the steering wheel with his thumb. He doesn’t _enjoy_ talking about this part of his life. This part of his past. He mentally refers to it as “The Dark Ages” for a fucking reason, and reliving it—remembering it— _ruminating_ on the goddamn _disappointment_ of it—he’d just really rather fucking not. “Anyway, you need a GED to apply to culinary school, and I wasn’t, uh, I wasn’t cut out for that shit, you know?”

It’s a joke.

It’s a weak, shitty, self-deprecating joke.

And Draco’s gaze—it isn’t pitying, exactly. He looks upset, disgruntled, that trademark pout-frown making another exaggerated, ridiculous appearance, more severe, less funny, somehow, but Scabior isn’t sure what he said wrong.

“You didn’t finish high school?” Malfoy asks.

“Nah. Didn’t like it.”

“What about a GED?”

“What?” Scabior plays dumb. He’s super fucking good at that. “Oh, no, yeah, I have my GED, but when I was, like, seventeen—” He waves his hand, feigning nonchalance. “It doesn’t matter. That’s not really my scene.”

Malfoy’s teeth audibly clack together, like he’s having to physically hold himself back from blurting out—what, an argument? A denial? A patronizing lecture on the value of a good old-fashioned _education?_ —but then he glances over at the lake, away from Scabior, towards where the rain is tapering off.

Slowing down.

Misting, like a jungle waterfall, like a too-hot shower, like a perfectly-timed curtain of fog in the middle of that cringey fucking Tunnel of Love ride at Coney Island.

* * *

Scabior pours way too much lube onto his fingers while Draco kisses him, sucks at his tongue, bites at his lip, and eventually knocks the bottle over, spilling half of it onto their pile of rumpled, hastily discarded clothing.

Freeze frame.

Record scratch.

With the first rolling, unhurried thrust of his hips, Scabior reaches down to spread Draco’s legs a little bit more, palms spanning the whole goddamn width of his inner thighs, dipping into the divots at the top—he can see stars and fireflies and silvery, ethereal spears of moonlight reflecting back at him from the puddles on the forest floor, from the musty window glass, from the tarnished chrome accents on the liftgate.

The blanket they’ve spread out across the still-wet bed of the truck is Malfoy’s. Princeton orange. Exceptionally soft. Well-made.

Ruined now, probably.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

Properly assembling a high-quality breakfast sandwich is kind of an underrated art form, in Scabior’s opinion.

“See,” he says, holding up the knife he’s using to spread garlic-thyme aioli onto a lightly toasted English muffin, “you can’t put too much. It’ll make it soggy, and overpower all the other flavors—”

“I know how to butter a piece of toast,” Malfoy deadpans, elbows propped on the kitchen table, chin nestled in the cradle of his hands. He’s been intermittently yawning since he rolled out of Scabior’s bed thirty minutes ago, wearing monogrammed goddamn silk boxers and not a whole lot else. “Boarding school, remember? Extremely comprehensive curriculum.”

“This isn’t butter. Or toast.”

“The same principles apply.”

“Principles?”

“ _Culinary_ principles.”

“Uh, okay, Mr. Wizard,” Scabior says, reaching for the spatula on the counter next to the stove, deftly flipping two over-easy eggs in the sizzling cast-iron skillet. The yolks are satisfyingly springy. The whites are satisfyingly glossy. It’s—satisfying. He’s _satisfied_. “Did those same culinary principles not apply when you had to ask me what tea leaves were?”

“You _know_ what they looked like.”

“Sweetheart, there was candied orange zest in that bag.”

Draco sniffs, nose wrinkling as he tries to toss his hair back without moving his head too much. “Well, was it _labeled?”_

“As I’ve mentioned, like, _numerous_ times before—” The oil in the skillet hisses and pops, and Scabior briefly inspects the eggs before turning his attention to the table, where a box grater and two slabs of saran-wrapped cheese are waiting for him. “—labels are for amateurs.”

Draco grunts. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but—”

“You’re wrong.”

“—aren’t you basically the literal definition of an amateur?”

Scabior has to sternly instruct himself not to fucking smile. “Maybe _physically_.”

At that, Draco heaves a sigh that’s big and dramatic and exasperated and ever so faintly tinged with laughter, guttural, breathless traces of it that Scabior has a sinking, undeniable suspicion should be striking him as out of place in this moment, in this kitchen—because “domestic” is absolutely the right word for it, for what’s happening here, for what’s _been_ fucking happening here, but so is “intimate” and so is “perfect” and so is “impossible” and that’s—

Well.

Bullshit.

That’s what it is.

It’s bullshit.

“So,” Scabior says, determinedly clearing his throat and gesturing, with a flourish, to the slab of firmer, chalkier cheese on the table, “this very good boy is from a creamery in Vermont. He’s a cheddar, but he’s, like, a senior citizen type of cheddar? Mega old. Aged. Really sharp. Really peppery. He needs to mellow out a little, stop scaring all the kids off his lawn. Which is why we’re going to pair him up with—” Scabior points to the second cheese. “— _this_ also very good boy, who is sweet and mild and subtle. Gouda. Not a crazy bone in his tremendously easy to digest body.”

Draco squints at him, shifting in his chair, his expression visibly cycling—no, visibly fluttering, like an open goddamn book whose pages aren’t quite sold on being turned yet—through an odd assortment of emotions. There’s indulgence, there’s bemusement, there’s a dangerous goddamn _flicker_ of fondness, of affection, that’s making that offensively persistent, seemingly permanent ache in Scabior’s chest feel a lot more like a hole. A wound. Gaping and contracting, ragged edges huddling in on themselves like that might maybe stem the bleeding a little.

With jerky, mechanical movements, Scabior grates the cheese.

Scratches his thumbnail against the cutting board where the English muffins are resting.

“Anyway,” he says, “the sausage we browned earlier—”

“You mean your weirdo rustic pork tartare?” Draco asks drolly.

“The _sausage_ ,” Scabior says again, stifling a wry, panicky grin as he maneuvers the eggs out of the skillet and onto a plate, switching the stove off with his free hand, “is going _between_ the marinated tomato slices and the—”

“Do you like dancing?”

Scabior startles, glancing up from the still-hot eggs and the pile of cheese he’s planning to melt on top of them. “Dancing,” he repeats, nonplussed. Draco is gnawing on the inside of his cheek. Bouncing his knee. Anxious. Skittish. “Do I like—what? Why?”

“There’s a dance, you know, at camp, an end of summer . . . thing,” Draco says, explains, except it isn’t really an explanation. It’s the opposite of an explanation. The inverse. The antithesis. The step at the end of the recipe for pineapple upside-down cake where you turn the fucking pineapple cake upside-fucking-down. “It’s—it’ll be lame, obviously, but—”

“Then why go?” Scabior interrupts.

Draco shrugs, uncharacteristically awkward. “I don’t . . . it’s just something to do.” He plucks at a loose string hanging from the bottom of his undershirt. “It could be—fun. Funny. Right?”

“Funny, like—to who?” Scabior asks with a snort, and the sound, the question, it comes out so much meaner and harsher and more caustic, more acidic, more _bitter_ than he’d have liked for it to. It’s like a glaringly, humiliatingly bright, billboard-sized neon sign in a pitch-black sea of asphalt: HERE’S THE BRUISE. THE SOFT SPOT. THE SCAR TISSUE. BOMBS AWAY, BITCHES. “To whoever sees us together there?”

Draco whips his head up and around so quickly it’s probably a minor miracle he doesn’t pinch a nerve. Pull a muscle. “What the fuck?”

“Yeah, exactly, what the fuck.”

“No, seriously,” Draco snaps. “What the _fuck?”_

Scabior rolls his eyes and slaps a marinated tomato slice down onto a sausage patty. “Oh, sorry, are we pretending we both don’t know what this is? What it looks like? Should we go out and hold hands and share a milkshake and scandalize all your Puritan ancestors?”

Draco’s mouth is pulled into a hard, tense line. “It’s a dance.”

“No, baby, it’s a _statement_.”

“Would that be so bad?” Draco demands. “You like me, don’t you?”

Scabior’s jaw actually goes slack. “In what universe is _me_ liking _you_ the problem?”

At that, Draco’s anger—and, yeah, he’s fucking angry, he’s fucking bristling with it, teeth bared and hackles raised—seems to falter a little. “I don’t understand.”

“No shit.”

“If _you_ like _me_ , and I . . . I like you . . .” Draco trails off, looking painfully young. “I don’t understand what the problem is.”

Scabior doesn’t speak, not for a while, and the silence, suddenly, is daunting.

Oppressive.

_Stupid._

Rule #1 of banging prissy yacht club jerkoffs is that you don’t analyze it. You don’t think about it. You accept your destiny as a whited-out, mostly illegible footnote in their future Library of Congress biography, and you enjoy the blowjobs and the daddy issues and the fridge full of expensive imported beer you didn’t buy for as long as they fucking let you.

Head down.

Chin up.

Rule #2 of banging prissy yacht club jerkoffs, of course, is that you don’t fucking fall in love with them.

“So, once upon a time,” Scabior says, gaze flicking over to the remaining tomato slices, lurking on a nearby platter in a puddle of herb-studded balsamic vinegar; it’s streaking his hands, too, the vinegar, the basil, staining the whorls of his fingerprints and the uneven lines crisscrossing his palms. “There was a princess. She was, you know, spoiled and selfish and—”

“Okay,” Draco interjects, overly loud.

“—and she was supposed to marry this bad-ass, hella charming prince, right, but he got turned into a frog by a jealous witch, blah blah blah, the curse could only be lifted with a kiss, et cetera.” Scabior pauses, throat bobbing as he swallows. “So, the princess, she had to go, uh, kiss a bunch of frogs, right? To find her prince? Lift the curse? Live happily ever after?”

Draco’s cheeks are flushed a splotchy, awful, furious pink. “Another idiotic metaphor? Really?”

Scabior huffs, wondering when the ache in his chest became so savagely goddamn _tender_. Like it’s infected. Like it’s going to take a while to heal. “I’m the guy you fuck around with for a couple of months when you’re feeling, like, rebellious. Yeah? Trying to piss your parents off?”

“That isn’t—”

“And when you think about me in five years, or ten years, or whenever—you will _regret_ me.”

“Will you fucking _stop_ —”

“That’s what you’ll do,” Scabior says, undeterred. “You’ll sit back and you’ll laugh with your billionaire CEO buddies about how lucky you were to escape without an STD or a criminal record or—” He squeezes his eyes shut, unwilling to continue staring a either his own hands or Draco’s face, Draco’s irate, indignant, so efficiently, proficiently emotionless face. “I’m a mistake, okay? You’re allowed to make those at your age.”

Draco sneers, but it’s shaky. “Please, be more condescending, I dare you.”

“I didn’t choose Dare,” Scabior says flatly. “That’s more your thing, isn’t it?”

Draco’s nostrils flare as his lower lip trembles. Wobbles. “You’re not a mistake.”

“Yeah, sweetheart, I am.”

“No,” Draco argues, the slant of his jaw mulish, stubborn, “you’re _not_.”

And then—

Silence.

Again.

Scabior isn’t sure he has the energy to fight about this anymore; isn’t sure he has the _stamina_ , like, emotionally, to outline all the reasons Draco is wrong. Because he is wrong. He’s so fucking wrong. Scabior isn’t just a mistake, he’s _the_ mistake. He’s a house of cards. A toothpick Stonehenge. Fundamentally unstable, fundamentally unsafe—structurally unsound, right down to the goddamn studs. There’s nothing about how he’s built, about how he’s put together, that makes him cut out for a relationship.

Especially not a relationship with “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy”—and what would that even look like? How would it work? It’s a nice fantasy. A pleasant daydream.

It isn’t real, though.

It’s never going to be real.

Scabior is a mess.

A fucking _mess_.

He’s the kind of mess that isn’t fun to clean up, the kind of mess that sticks, that clings, that lingers, that dries into a firm, calloused shell with a rot-soft center, like raw honey or burnt caramel; he’s the kind of mess that doesn’t just disappear with some hot water and fucking elbow grease, the kind of mess that’s easier to give up on, to throw away, than bother figuring out how to _fix._

That’s what this is, right?

Draco believing, with all that silver spoon arrogance, all that rich kid, yacht club jerkoff conceit, that he can do that? Clean up the mess, save the whales, polish the scumbag townie’s heart of not-gold?

“Draco,” Scabior finally says, pleads, quiet and exhausted and right on the wafer-thin knife-edge of goddamn desperate, “just let me be a frog, okay?”

Draco just stares at him, unblinking, unmoving, calm and cool and calculating—oh, and heartbroken, genuinely, terribly, because he so obviously isn’t calm or cool or calculating but he’s fucking _trying,_ isn’t he—and then he shoves his chair backwards, viciously enough that the legs scrape and claw at the linoleum floor as he lurches to his feet, spinning on the heel of his dumb, overpriced, designer leather flip-flops and stalking towards the door.

“You can be whatever the fuck you want,” he calls back tersely, scornfully, already halfway down the hall. “But I’m not a fucking _princess.”_

* * *

Scabior lets him go.

Fucking— _duh,_ Scabior lets him go; he isn’t a stalker, he isn’t a masochist, and he doesn’t have a lot of other options.

He never really has.

* * *

The party is still a summer party.

Which is to say: the party is still loud, and the party is still crowded, and the party is still fucking _slow._ Still more of a sleepy simmer than a raucous, rolling boil. There’s still a boombox covered in ragged strips of duct tape and still a trash bag full of Natty Light perched like goddamn king-and-queen royalty in the bed of the rusty, biohazard shit-can Dolohov calls a truck; the boombox is blaring Whitesnake, not Springsteen, but the beer cans are still sitting in a puddle of rapidly melting convenience store ice. The keg is still probably stolen, and the bonfire is still probably illegal. The whole scene is still kind of scummy, honestly.

Scabior still fits right in.

“Malfoy, Draco Malfoy” still emphatically does not.

He’s still here, though, still standing closer than he arguably should be, hair still slicked back and breath still tainted sour-sweet with a medley of cheap wine coolers—it would be like déjà vu, like some kind of Hollywood-magic do-over of that first night, that first _mistake_ , if it weren’t for the fact that the similarities pretty clearly end there.

Scabior is drunk.

Scabior is _fucking_ drunk.

Scabior is fucking drunk and fucking miserable and fucking guilty and fucking pissed about it, pissed about why and how and where and _why_ he feels like this, can’t seem to stop feeling like this, pissed enough that when he notices Draco stand-swaying in front of him, that pale, pretty face scrunched up in a comically contradictory blend of disdain and yearning and contempt and regret—well, Scabior abruptly, vindictively wishes that his misery, his guilt, his belly full of cheap, shitty beer; he wishes it was contagious.

All of it.

He wishes _all of it_ was fucking contagious and that “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy” was patient goddamn zero.

“You need something, banana split?” Scabior asks, smacking his lips around the chewed-up plastic rim of his cup. They’re a little numb. Buzzy. His lips, not the cup. “I’m, like, ninety-nine percent sure you shouldn’t want to talk to me.” He squints. “Or . . . do _I_ not want to talk to _you?_ Who’s got the moral high ground here?”

Draco gives him a quick, almost reluctant once-over, tightening his grip on his own cup, his knuckles going white. Pink? White _and_ pink. Like Valentine’s Day. Depressingly deflated pharmacy balloons and little candy hearts that taste like chalk and cough syrup. That’s what his knuckles look like. That’s the fucking _emotion_ they’re fucking _evoking_. His knuckles, not—whatever. Fuck it.

“Are you drunk?” Draco bleats.

Scabior mimes shooting two finger-guns. “ _Wasted_.”

“Why?”

“Why the hell not?”

“You don’t normally—” Draco breaks off, shoulders slumping. “Never mind. It’s none of my business.”

Scabior hums and glances over at the rest of the party, which seems very far away right now, like the distance between them—between Scabior and Draco and everybody else—is fluctuating. Impermanent. Like every goddamn step is a country mile, like trudging through wet cement, like the weight of this moment and this summer and this entire conversation isn’t just a figment of his beer-addled imagination.

“So,” Scabior says, nostrils twitching, “you didn’t really answer me.”

Draco sighs. “Didn’t I?”

“Nope.”

“What was the question?”

Scabior smirks, shutting one eye and clumsily tucking an errant strand of hair behind his ear. “Truth or Dare.”

Draco doesn’t smile. “That wasn’t the question.”

“ _Was it not?”_ Scabior drawls in a decidedly mean, completely god-awful approximation of Draco’s smarmy upper-crust Martha’s Vineyard wherever-the-fuck prep school accent.

Draco scoffs, disbelieving. “You are such an asshole.”

Scabior slaps his hand down on his thigh. “That’s what I’ve been—that’s what I was trying to _tell you_ , baby,” he says, laughing triumphantly. “I _am_ an asshole! A loser! A douchebag of the highest—” He laughs again. Sharper. Harder. “Of the _highest_ order of magnitude. That’s me. That’s who I am. Glad you’ve,” he hiccups, “caught up. Caught on. Up? On? Up? Help me out, college boy, I flunked tenth-grade English.”

Draco cocks his head, considering, but doesn’t respond.

Doesn’t take the bait.

Scabior curls his tongue around his teeth, rubbing, tapping, dragging, and tastes nothing but beer. Christ. So much fucking beer. His jaw works as he tries to gather his thoughts. Collect them. Mold them into something coherent, something less scattered, less jumbled, less pathetic, because—

_Man,_ he does not like how Draco’s looking at him.

All that righteous, belligerent, utterly unsympathetic anger he’d bounded over with, strapped to his back like a fucking parachute, like a fucking yacht club jerkoff lifeline—it’s beginning to fade, beginning to dwindle, beginning to morph into a listless, wary splinter of _understanding._

Brutal, dawning, criminally unacceptable understanding.

Scabior can practically see the cartoon lightbulb flickering above Draco’s head.

“What if I said I don’t care?” Draco asks, but he isn’t curious. His tone is—clinical. Detached. Like he already knows the answer. “That you’re an asshole?”

Scabior chugs more beer. “Except you _do_ care.”

“Nominally, sure.”

“What does that—” Scabior puffs his cheeks out and mutters, “No. No, no. I don’t give a shit what it means.”

It’s Draco’s turn to smirk. “Well, according to Merriam-Webster’s Ninth—”

“Oh, fuck off,” Scabior says, _chuckles,_ reluctantly scrubbing at the stubble on his chin with the callus-raspy heel of his palm. Draco’s smirk widens. Scabior’s chest fucking hurts. “Now who’s the asshole?”

“Still you.”

“Takes one to know one, vanilla bean.”

“ _Vanilla bean?”_

Scabior winks, even sleazier than usual. Faking it ‘til he makes it. “Long. Skinny. Expensive. Delicious.”

Draco doesn’t blush, which sucks, but he does narrow his eyes, suspiciously pensive, suspiciously _shrewd,_ which—also sucks. Goddamn. “I see.”

Scabior’s genuinely worried that Draco does, in fact, _see_. “Vanilla is really underrated, you know? Like, as a flavor. There’s nothing boring about it.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“It has layers,” Scabior goes on, physically unable to shut the fuck up. He blames the beer. The new moon. The sliver of bare skin peeking out from between Draco’s t-shirt and Draco’s shorts, smooth, luminous, the sharp jut of his hipbone and the noticeable absence of any kind of underwear. “It can be—it can be sweet. Smoky. Floral. Woodsy. It’s an aromatic, right? Delicate. Familiar. You _recognize_ it when you taste it. I’m, I guess you could—if we were playing dodgeball, like, hypothetically, I’d totally be Team Vanilla. First pick. Blacktop royalty.”

Draco smiles, sort of. Almost. “Team Vanilla, huh?”

On the other side of the bonfire, Dolohov is sprawled out in a giggling blonde girl’s lap, the bulk of his frame positively dwarfing hers, and sipping from a heavy-duty metal flask. He’s smiling. She’s flirting.

It’s very weird.

This is all very weird.

_Surreal_.

That’s the word.

It’s fucking _surreal_.

“I miss eating you out,” Scabior says, reckless, wistful, just to get a little of that unbridled, beyond justified rage back into Draco’s whole—face equation. He needs that. Scabior needs that. “Not, like, the—” He wiggles his tongue. “That’s—whatever, if I really missed that I could just hunt down some peaches and go to _town_ , but—you. Your ass. The sounds you make. I miss that.”

Draco drops his cup, sloshing fake strawberry wine all over the ground. “It’s been _three days.”_

“Three days is four days too many.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Yeah. Well. You asked.”

“No,” Draco says, audibly incredulous, “I didn’t.”

“Anyway,” Scabior sighs, put-upon, and yawns into his shoulder, “this was, uh, not fun, you know, but not _not_ fun, so I’m—”

“I’m leaving on Sunday,” Draco interrupts, and Scabior’s stomach lurches. Clenches. “For school.”

It takes Scabior several seconds to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Awesome.”

“Princeton.”

“Uh, yeah. I know.”

“New Jersey.”

“That’s . . . yeah. That’s where Princeton is.”

“It’s not that far from here,” Draco adds, more pointedly, less casually; he hasn’t moved to pick up his cup, hasn’t so much as fucking glanced at it, and it’s all Scabior can bring himself to focus on. “A few hours by train.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not sure it’s far enough to even qualify as long-distance.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“ _Taunting_ me,” Scabior snaps. “I get it, okay. You’re mad? That’s fine. I’m mad, too. You don’t like me very much right now? That’s fine, I don’t like me very much right now, either.”

“How is that what you’re getting from this? Of course I _like_ you!”

“Well, you shouldn’t!”

“What do you want me to do, apologize?” Draco demands, sarcastic, scathing—like he’s finally done politely pulling those yacht club jerkoff punches for the lowlife drug dealer’s benefit. “Sorry I happen to like you more than you like yourself. _My bad_.”

Scabior rolls his neck around and groans, long and loud and agitated. Itchy with it. Twitchy with it. “Why is this so _difficult_ for you to understand?”

“I understand perfectly, actually.”

“You definitely do not.”

“I definitely _do_.”

“You deserve better,” Scabior says, sweeping his arm out as if that singular gesture is going to adequately encompass the massive, sprawling, goddamn endless fucking unfairness of the situation. “That’s it, okay? You deserve better than the guy who couldn’t even peak in high school.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Draco says, barking out this horrible, derisive, gravelly noise. It isn’t a laugh. It’s not even close to a fucking laugh. “ _Fuck_ you. God, you don’t even—” He stops, raking his fingers through his hair. “You’re _smart_ , do you know that? You’re really—you’re _annoyingly_ smart. Obnoxiously smart. And you put on this bullshit fucking _act_ , don’t you, like you’re some dumb, directionless deadbeat—”

“You think that’s an _act?”_

“—so, what, no one expects anything from you? Anything _of_ you?” Draco swallows, eyes glittering, throat bobbing. “You’re smart, and you’re funny, and you’re talented, and you’re the best kind of asshole, and you’re—and you make me feel like I know what I—” He stops again, blinking rapidly, too rapidly, before he grits his teeth, snarling a little, upper lip curling, like he’s upset with himself. “You deserve better, too. Do _you_ understand _that?”_

Scabior flinches, taking a semi-automatic sip of beer to mask his discomfort. It’s muscle memory. Reflex. A coping mechanism. Bullseye, target hit, man down. “Okay,” he says, toneless. Neutral. “Maybe I am smart. Maybe I am—maybe I’m all that other stuff, too.”

“You are,” Draco says fiercely, earnestly—stupidly. Christ.

Scabior shakes his head, rueful, drunk, dizzy. “You know what else I am? Malfoy, Draco Malfoy?”

“What?”

“I’m a _coward_ ,” Scabior confesses, like it’s a fucking secret, before leaning in and lowering his voice to a snide, patronizing whisper. “With absolutely stellar self-preservation instincts.”

Draco has his hands balled into fists, helpless and ineffective, but he isn’t running away. He should be. He _really_ should be. He should already be on one of those fucking trains he mentioned, crossing state lines, comparing Rolexes with all the other incoming freshmen.

“Is that what you’re doing?” Draco bites out. “Protecting yourself?”

Scabior doesn’t reply.

Not verbally.

Instead, he gulps it all down—the lung-seizing terror, the heart-stopping, paralyzing flood of doubt, indecision; the beer, too, he drains the shit out of what’s left of his beer and he tosses the empty cup aside and he steps forward, he breathes in deep—

He kisses him.

Draco.

He kisses Draco.

* * *

Draco kisses back greedily, furiously, holding onto Scabior’s bare shoulders like he thinks Scabior might float away if he doesn’t, like he thinks Scabior needs to be anchored, needs to be caught, needs to be trapped.

There’s a tree, eventually, weather-roughened bark scratching at Scabior’s skin as he tugs his own shorts down, as he _yanks_ Draco’s shorts down, spits into his palm and gasp-laughs when the tip of his cock rubs up against Draco’s, pre-cum slicking the way, drinks in Draco’s answering moan when he rocks their hips together, reaches around to grab at Draco’s ass, squeezing and groping and just barely stroking the pad of his thumb down the crease, gently nudging against his hole—

Draco comes.

Draco comes _hard_.

And fuck, shit, _fuck_ , Scabior’s going to have bruises where Draco’s clutching at him, digging his nails in, finger-painted handprints, almost, painfully black and blue reminders of how good this was. How good it felt. How good it could always be.

Bruises.

_Bruises_.

Scabior is going to fucking cherish every last one of them.

* * *

He wasn’t lying.

“Malfoy, Draco Malfoy” _does_ deserve better, so much fucking better, he deserves roses and candles and vintage James Bond Jaguars and to be worshipped, to be pampered, to be treasured and loved and—

There isn’t a rule, though, is there.

That Scabior can’t _try_.

To be that.

To be better.

* * *

It’s hot as all fuck inside the camp lodge where the dance is being held.

Scabior tentatively walks inside, quirking a brow at the sight of a sadly spinning strobe light and a folding card table that’s sagging under the weight of a comically enormous punch bowl and several tons of shredded crepe paper; that song from _Footloose_ is blaring from a shitty wood-paneled speaker set up on a tripod, and the whole auditorium reeks of sweat and Clearasil and overcooked macaroni and the vodka-spiked ghost of last year’s dance, too.

He looks around, tugging at the collar of the admittedly ill-fitting shirt he’d dug up and out of Dolohov’s closet—Scabior had drawn the goddam line at wearing a tie because this is a _romantic gesture_ , not a fucking job interview, thanks, but his pants have been partially ironed and his shoes have little polished leather tassels on them and he’d _shaved_ , for fuck’s sake. His hair is combed back into a mostly neat bun at the nape of his neck.

This is, unfortunately, as good as it’s ever going to fucking get.

Scabior hovers in the doorway for another minute, fighting the almost manic urge to either burst out laughing or hightail it right back home. This is worse than high school. Worse than when he actually tried to work at a restaurant, actually put on an apron and pretended to care about the optics of regularly clocking in late and accidentally grated too much nutmeg into the potato au gratin.

Draco isn’t here.

Draco isn’t _here_.

Why the fuck isn’t Draco here?

What the fuck is Scabior being punished for _now?_

“ _Holy—_ are you—” Some bronze-haired Greek god wannabe piece of shit is lumbering across the edge of the dancefloor, squinting at Scabior, his chiseled, handsome features slack with disbelief. “You’re the guy, right? _Malfoy’s_ guy?”

Scabior . . . isn’t sure what to do with that.

Like, he _is_ Malfoy’s.

Draco’s.

Technically.

Not technically.

In all the ways that matter.

But acknowledging that, out loud, to a perfect fucking stranger—before he’s even acknowledged it to _Draco_ —

“Oh, gosh,” the girl next to knockoff Hercules says, batting at his bicep; she’s small, pretty, Asian, dark-skinned and—happy? Sunny? Glowing? Relentlessly cheerful? There should be laws against it, whatever it is. “That was so rude, I’m sorry, it’s just—Draco’s been, well, _absent_ a lot?”

Bargain bin Marc Antony snorts and slings a possessive arm around the girl’s waist, patting her hip. “Dude hasn’t shown up for war council in, like, six weeks. That’s a little more than _absent._ ”

“War council,” Scabior echoes, uneasily straightening his spine. “Okay.”

“Cabin meeting,” sugar-free Zeus explains. “Roommate shit. He’s never there, obviously, but that smarmy blond fuck, god love him, is an integral part of the team dynamic, right, and it’s important to—”

“Right,” Scabior interjects, clearing his throat and crossing—and then uncrossing, and then crossing, and then uncrossing, Jesus, fuck, _god_ —his arms over his chest. It’s weird and hushed and quiet in the auditorium as the band nerd DJ dusts off the next record. No more _Footloose._ No more fancy-fucking-free. “Uh, so, where is he? Right now?”

The girl smiles sympathetically. “He’s back at the cabin. The boys’ cabin. He seemed kind of—”

“Sulky,” factory-defective Apollo finishes for her. “He was listening to, like, Pat Benatar and giving murder-eyes to his suitcase.”

Scabior winces. “Murder-eyes?”

“ _Murder-eyes_.”

Scabior scratches at his jaw, still not used to feeling smooth skin there, and takes an aborted step back, as if to leave, except he realizes, belatedly, that he doesn’t have a clue _where_ to fucking leave _to._ He’d never asked Draco about where he slept when he wasn’t sleeping with Scabior; about what he did when he wasn’t doing Scabior. In hindsight, that was definitely because he didn’t like thinking about any of that, about the life Draco already had, the life Draco was always going to return to—the _future_ that would, inevitably, sooner rather than later, include Draco sleeping in lots of places where Scabior wouldn’t be. Shouldn’t be. Couldn’t be.

In lots of beds that weren’t Scabior’s.

“Okay, well,” Scabior says, “where, uh. Is that? Again? The cabin?”

Low-fat Caesar salad dressing frowns—just a little, just _enough_ —and then points outside, towards a second dirt path that Scabior hadn’t noticed before. It’s unmarked. That feels relevant. Crucially, indelibly poignant.

“It’s just down there. Not too far. Porch light should be on unless he turned it off, the big fucking baby.”

Scabior forces himself to grin, his stomach swimming with apprehension, with jangling, tire-screeching nerves, rattling around in there like thumb tacks in a mason jar, because what if Draco doesn’t want to fucking see him? What if Draco doesn’t want to fucking deal with this? With Scabior? With Scabior’s myriad goddamn _issues?_

What is Scabior offering, anyway?

What does Scabior _have_ to offer?

Long-distance relationships are bullshit, everyone knows that. They don’t last and they don’t work and they foster nothing but resentment and insecurity and—

_I’m not sure it’s far enough to even qualify as long-distance,_ Draco had said.

Like he knew.

Like he believed.

Scabior nods, then, shoulders relaxing, abruptly, gratefully self-assured. “Thanks,” he says, winking as he turns away. “I’ll invite both of you to the wedding.”

Employee discount Ulysses whistles lowly and mutters, “Man, I did _not_ think Malfoy had it in him.”

Scabior is already jogging outside, halfway down the lodge steps, but he can’t help himself from snorting, calling back, “Sometimes it’s in me, actually!”

Behind him, there’s a masculine guffaw of incredulous, appreciative laughter, and then a long-suffering, more feminine sigh, footsteps and voices and the opening chords of “Hungry Like the Wolf”—and Scabior grins for real, feeling significantly lighter, significantly more optimistic, than he did ten minutes ago. Five minutes ago.

Ever, probably.

He can do this.

Fuck _yeah_ , he can do this.

When life hands you lemons, you don’t just make lemonade—you make lemon bars and lemon sorbet and lemon scones, lemon cream sauce, lemon ricotta cheesecake. “Malfoy, Draco Malfoy” had fallen into Scabior’s lap like a six-foot-three burlap sack full of gorgeous, pristine Genoese lemons, unexpected and baffling and brightly, brilliantly bitter.

But Scabior already made lemonade.

It’s time to, like, broaden his horizons, isn’t it? Expand the proverbial menu? Add some more goddamn flavor to his goddamn arsenal?

The cabin isn’t far.

It’s small, squat, with brown plank siding and a tattered screen door.

Scabior jams his hands into his pockets and grinds the heels of his uncomfortable fucking grown-up shoes into the pine needles and gravel scattered across the porch, gazing up at the birds’ nests studded along the eaves, the drainpipe, the gingerly sloping roof.

He raises his fist to knock.

The door swings open on rust-squeaky hinges.

“I’m not _pouting_ , McLaggen, I don’t need the two of you to—” Draco breaks off, glassy, pink-rimmed gray eyes going wide with astonishment, with _panic_ , before his mouth closes and his nostrils flare and the tips of his ears go red. “Oh, fuck off.”

The door slams shut.

Scabior blinks, utterly speechless, fist still raised.

The door swings back open.

“Fine,” Draco hisses, brandishing a tacky black-and-white piano tie and looping it around the outer doorknob. He jerks his thumb behind him, motioning for Scabior to follow him into the cabin. “Hurry up, I’m packing.”

Scabior bites his tongue. Gnaws. Chews. Hesitates. There are ceiling-high bunk beds pushed against three of the walls, dirty clothes and socks and underwear and swim trunks strewn across most of the floor, haphazard stacks of _Sports Illustrated_ and _Rolling Stone,_ sun-bleached flip-flops and muddy Chucks with the laces tied together, a forgotten Walkman and the warped metal remnants of a miniature basketball hoop.

Scabior glances at Draco.

Draco, who’s scowling, who’s fidgeting, who’s wearing a pair of neatly pressed aquamarine chinos and _Scabior’s_ faded old Def Leppard t-shirt.

“I do _not_ accept your apology,” Draco announces with a sniff. “Just. So you know.”

Scabior chuckles warmly. “Fuck no, you don’t.”

Draco’s scowl darkens. “What?”

“You don’t accept my apology. That’s fair. You shouldn’t.”

“You were _mean_ to me.”

“I fucking _was_ ,” Scabior agrees, tone encouraging. “Yeah. I was a dick. Absolutely.”

Draco’s mask is beginning to crack, his forehead creasing, his lips trembling, his pinched, unhappy expression faltering. Splintering. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what, Gumby?”

“ _Taunting me_ ,” Draco sneers. “That’s what you called it, right?”

Scabior shrugs, feigning indifference. He’s a shitty actor. There’s nothing indifferent about how intently he’s watching Draco, how restlessly he’s drumming his fingers against the bend of his elbow.

“Ask me,” Scabior says impulsively.

“Ask you what?”

“Truth or Dare, come on, ask me.”

“Why?”

“Why _not?”_

Draco stares at him like he’s a fucking moron. “Truth or Dare, then, Chef Boyardee.”

Scabior fake-stumbles backwards, grimacing like he’s been shot. “Fucking _ouch_.”

There’s a couple of seconds of silence, tense and fraught and awkward, but then Draco is shaking his head and gritting his teeth and blurting out—

“I don’t want this to be another game.”

At that, Scabior’s heart kind of skips, kind of stutters, kind of—stops, drops, and rolls, like it understands there’s a fire that needs to be put out but can’t quite pinpoint _where_. “It’s not—it isn’t a game.”

“I don’t want the only reason I know anything about you, the only reason you know anything about _me_ , to be because of—” Draco huffs, mouth pulled down at the corners, and fuck, shit, _fuck,_ Scabior is somehow already fucking this up. “Because of Truth or Dare _loopholes._ ”

“I don’t want that, either.”

“So,” Draco goes on, like Scabior hadn’t spoken at all, “whatever you’re trying to tell me, whatever _statement_ you’re trying to make, can you just—do it? Please? Without any of the excuses or the, the pretext or the—”

“The _Truth_ is,” Scabior interrupts, swallowing once, and then twice, and then three times, just to really guaran-goddamn-tee his throat is clear. “I have one single friend in the whole entire world. One person willing to very occasionally put up with me and my shit. My life savings is in a shoe box under my nightstand—or, the overturned apple crate I stole from an abandoned orchard and now _use_ as a nightstand because I don’t know where or how to buy furniture. I did a lot of drugs for a lot of years and I only stopped because I got paranoid about losing my sense of smell. Fucking up my palate. I’m not, like, a particularly good person, and I’ve been on my own for a long-ass time, and I have no idea what a fucking fish fork is, and I’m definitely going to embarrass the hell out of you if you ever ask me to—I don’t—tie a Windsor knot, or shake your dad’s hand without sweating, or—”

Scabior pauses, averting his gaze, a dust mote, a stray cobweb, a gust of humid, fan-funneled air tickling his nose.

“I’m not an easy person to care about,” he says quietly. Thickly. “I can’t make that go away overnight.”

When Scabior looks up again, Draco is just . . . studying him, face not quite unreadable.

Not quite impassive.

There’s a sheen of aching, urgent, reckless _want_ clouding Draco’s eyes, a faintly vibrating knot of tension stringing him together, bones and ligaments and fragile uncertainty, like he’s this-close to falling apart. Flying apart. High-wire circus shit. Scabior has never met another person he’s been this interested in. This fascinated by. It’s alarming, almost—would’ve been, full-stop, for-fucking-sure, just yesterday—allowing himself to think that.

To know it’s true.

“Anything else?” Draco eventually croaks, sounding overwhelmed.

“Oh, yeah, uh,” Scabior says, scrubbing at his jaw, his chin, barely missing the stubble there, “I have it on pretty good authority, actually, that I’m, like, really fucking smart? And funny? And talented? And the best kind of—”

Draco’s laugh is sudden, loud, helpless, _uncouth_ , rich and guttural and deep and raw, like it’s been wrenched out of him, scooped right out of the meat of his chest by one of those mechanical claw arcade toys.

“I’m also in love with you,” Scabior adds, flashing a wickedly nonchalant, slightly wobbly smile. “All, uh, all six-foot-three inches of you.”

Draco—there isn’t, for once, another fucking word for it— _flings_ himself at Scabior, then, those long arms and those longer legs and the scent of that mind-numbingly expensive sandalwood-petrichor-illegal spice trade cologne enveloping Scabior, snaking around him, burrowing into his pores, his lungs, his bloodstream—and it isn’t really comfortable for Scabior to hold Draco up like this, isn’t exactly effortless for Scabior to contort his upper body and crane his neck at such a weird goddamn angle to kiss Draco, to find his lips, but—

“You know,” Scabior whispers, conspiratorial, breath mingling with Draco’s, hands gently cupping his hips, the backs of his thighs, “my first plan, before Dolohov threw a bottle of vodka at me and told me it sucked, was actually—I was going to, like, come up to you and be all, _‘Ribbit’_ , you know, like a frog—”

“Oh, my god.”

“—and have a little stack of signs or notecards or whatever, with things written on them, like, ‘ _I’m sorry’_ and _‘I love you’_ and _‘Please kiss me so I can talk normally again and put on this Burger King crown like a prince’_ and—”

“Oh, my _god_.”

“But, uh, this probably worked out better than that would’ve.”

“I don’t know, maybe you should try it. Just to be—thorough.”

Scabior presses their foreheads together, nudging Draco’s nose with his own. “Ribbit.”

Draco’s lips twitch. “I’m in love with you, too, by the way.”

“Duh.”

“ _Duh?”_

“You called me _talented_ ,” Scabior says, snorts, hitching Draco’s legs higher up, tugging him impossibly closer, “and _smart_ , and _funny_ , and _handsome_ , and—”

“I did _not_ call you handsome.”

“You implied it.”

“Not really.”

“Yes, _really_ , I was _there_ , you were, like, a second away from—”

Draco cuts him off with a kiss, open-mouthed and relentless and so, so _soft_. Scabior slows it down. Flicks his tongue out. Draco tastes like a brand-new _pantheon_ of flavors, like an unexplored goddamn world, like jumping into the car and tearing up the gas station map and gunning the engine, chasing the asphalt, driving into the sunset.

“Hey,” Scabior murmurs, nipping at Draco’s bottom lip, “that tie on the door means what I think it means, right?”

* * *

It starts with a knock.

It ends with a—

Well, shit.

It doesn’t really end at all, does it?

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> some things that didn’t make the final cut of this fic but are Very Important to me, personally:
> 
>   * scabior doesn't go to culinary school. he teams up with dolohov and they start serving food at the gross townie dive bar - it's a seasonal menu!!! farm to mfing table!!! - and after some hit-or-miss health inspections they get their shit together and scabior's fancy delicious super secret mac and cheese receives some Very Good & Also Very Surprised Reviews from legitimate restaurant critics. scabior's hangover inspired sunday brunches become so popular with wide-eyed tourists and ornery locals and also lucius malfoy in sunglasses and a fake moustache - he's not spying!!! that would be crazy!!! ridiculous!!! he's just checking in!!! haha - that they end up having to take reservations, like, weeks in advance. scabior can poach the shit out of an organic free-range chicken egg, so jot that down.
>   * dolohov has a Night To Remember with lavender brown towards the end of camp and then spends a whole calendar year pining for her from afar until she comes back the next summer with her belly button pierced and the pining. just. intensifies
>   * draco has a thing about stealing scabior's clothing, which is weird because scabior doesn't actually own a lot of clothing? shirts optional, sun's out guns out, etc. draco is a thief.
>   * draco eventually transfers to brown - The Horror - after he and scabior binge watch all the indiana jones movies and he decides that he's going to be an archaeologist. lucius is appalled, narcissa is charmed by the adorable little dusting brushes draco has to learn to use, and scabior is, like, really fucking proud? but also he buys draco the classic indiana jones fedora and while he doesn't initially intend for it to be a Sex Thing it kind of obviously becomes a Sex Thing
>   * the winter after draco finishes grad school he tries to propose to scabior and scabior screeches, like, "is that even legal?" and draco is all, "well, no, but it's the thought that counts" and scabior Freaks Out and bakes scones for two weeks while draco becomes increasingly annoyed - and hurt, he's definitely hurt - and ultimately says, "if you don't want to even hypothetically pretend to be into the idea of marrying me - " and scabior, again, interrupts, like, "oh my god that is so not the problem here" and they frog-talk it out and it's fine and they wear matching rings on very expensive white gold chains around their necks for the sake of symbolism and then one day draco is nonchalantly all, "hey, there's a cool dig in greece but i'd have to commit to it for a couple of years" and scabior replies, without even thinking twice about it, "i've always been really into olive oil"
>   * THEY STAY IN LOVE FOREVER IT'S INCREDIBLY WHOLESOME GOOD BYE
>   * [come join me in hell](http://www.provocative-envy.tumblr.com)
> 



End file.
